I was talking to my cousin this morning to see if she remembered us having anything like The Pan.

She didn't, but she thought on it for a while.

Here's what she just emailed to me...

I was thinking about your suggestion this morning of something that might outlive us. Right now I can't think of anything we actually have now that we are still using we could pass along to one another.

However, I did think of something - a part of the landscape of the house - that is in a lot of photographs from early life at the Burris home on Crittenden Street to the end in 1980 when grandmother died. I look at this thing every time I drive by the house. It has been the setting for many a photograph and it has held up many a great man, woman and child.

The ledge.

I have attached a photograph from 1978 of Grandmother Burris sitting there - as she must have done numerous times since 1938 when the house was built. I know I sat on it many times, just not sure I was photographed there. No matter how many people were on that porch over the years, there was always someone sitting on the ledge. And only that one ledge - to the right of the front door as you were looking at it from your camera's lens in the front yard. Don't remember seeing anyone on the other - just that one..

In any case, both of those ledges seem to have been a perfect place for potted flowers or plants and I'm sure Grandmother must have thought of that, but they were always kept bare - maybe waiting for the next family member to sit for their photograph on the ledge - or maybe just for sitting as she knew her kids and grandkids did so much.

So this is my contribution. That ledge. Where so many of my loved ones had once been seated for their photograph in front of that beautiful house on Crittenden.